CEO Inside Debt Incentives and Corporate Tax Sheltering

This paper examines the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and corporate tax sheltering. Because inside debt holdings are generally unsecured and unfunded liabilities of the firm, CEOs are exposed to risk similar to that faced by outside creditors. As such, theory (Jensen and Meckling [1976]) suggests that inside debt holdings negatively impact CEO risk‐appetite. To the extent that corporate tax shelters are likely to result in high cash flow volatility in the future, we expect that inside debt holdings will curb CEOs from engaging in tax shelter transactions. Consistent with the prediction, we document a negative association between CEO inside debt holdings and tax sheltering. Additional analyses suggest that the effect of inside debt on tax sheltering is more (less) pronounced in the presence of high default risk and liquidity threats (cash‐out options in pension packages). Overall, our results highlight the importance of investigating the implication of CEO debt‐like compensation for corporate tax policies.     

Seeking safety: The relation between CEO inside debt holdings and the riskiness of firm investment and financial policies

CEO inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) are generally unsecured and unfunded liabilities of the firm. Because these characteristics of inside debt expose the CEO to default risk similar to that faced by outside creditors, theory predicts that CEOs with large inside debt holdings will display lower levels of risk-seeking behavior (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find a negative association between CEO inside debt holdings and the volatility of future firm stock returns, R&D expenditures, and financial leverage, and a positive association between CEO inside debt holdings and the extent of diversification and asset liquidity. Collectively, our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that CEOs with large inside debt holdings prefer investment and financial policies that are less risky.     

英国养老金金融化改革的经验和启示

文章梳理了英国养老金制度改革历程,归纳了三个支柱改革的金融化导向及表现,分析了金融化改革对第二、三支柱养老金覆盖率、缴费率、投资收益和基金积累的影响,以及生命周期化投资、养老金债券等金融创新在应对低利率风险、金融危机冲击风险中的作用.基于英国养老金金融化改革经验,结合我国企业年金和个人养老金发展的实际,总结了引入"自动加入"制度、发展集合年金计划、完善税收优惠、推行审慎监管、鼓励养老金生命周期投资创新以及改革基础养老金制度为职业年金和个人养老金金融化改革创造条件等结论和启示.     

Pay Me Later: Inside Debt and Its Role in Managerial Compensation

Though widely used in executive compensation, inside debt has been almost entirely overlooked by prior work. We initiate this research by studying CEO pension arrangements in 237 large capitalization firms. Among our findings are that CEO compensation exhibits a balance between debt and equity incentives; the balance shifts systematically away from equity and toward debt as CEOs grow older; annual increases in pension entitlements represent about 10% of overall CEO compensation, and about 13% for CEOs aged 61–65; CEOs with high debt incentives manage their firms conservatively; and pension compensation influences patterns of CEO turnover and cash compensation.     

CEO inside debt holdings and credit ratings

In this paper we investigate the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and long-term credit ratings. We provide evidence that firms with a higher level of inside debt holdings enjoy better credit ratings. Our results are robust to the use of alternative regression estimation and alternative measures of key variables. We employ instrumental variable–based two-stage least squares regression and instrumental variable regression estimation using heteroskedasticity-based instruments to mitigate the endogeneity concern. In addition, we employ propensity-matched sample and entropy balancing estimates to alleviate endogeneity concerns. Our cross-sectional analyses reveal that the relationship between CEO inside debt holdings and credit ratings is more pronounced in firms with a poor information environment, a weak monitoring mechanism, and powerful CEOs. Overall, findings from our study suggest that credit rating agencies evaluate CEO insider debt holdings positively in assessing the creditworthiness of a firm.     

Personal taxation of capital income and the financial leverage of firms

Tax competition for capital has led to a trend where many countries levy lower taxes on interest income, often introducing differential taxation between interest and business income. This study analyzes the effect on firm debt usage. We exploit Germany’s 2009 tax reform, which introduced a final withholding tax on interest income with a flat rate 18 percentage points below the unchanged tax rate on income from unincorporated businesses, as a quasi-experiment. The results, based on firm-level panel data, indicate that firms increase their leverage when the tax rate on interest income decreases, albeit to a small degree.     

CEO inside debt and investment‐cash flow sensitivity

This paper provides a new explanation for investment‐cash flow sensitivity from the perspective of CEO inside debt holdings. We examine the effect of CEO pensions and deferred compensation (inside debt) on investment‐cash flow sensitivity for a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2012. We find that the firms with higher relative CEO leverage ratios (CEO's debt/equity ratio scaled by the firm's debt/equity ratio) generate higher investment‐cash flow sensitivity. Moreover, one standard deviation increase in the logarithm of the relative CEO leverage ratio enlarges investment‐cash flow sensitivity by 50 per cent. This positive relationship still holds even after we take account of endogeneity and financial constraints.     

Cash-Balance Plan Conversions: Evidence on Excise Taxes and Implicit Contracts

Firms that wish to switch from a traditional defined‐benefit pension plan to a defined‐contribution‐type plan have a choice between converting to a cash‐balance plan or replacing the defined‐benefit plan with a full‐fledged defined‐contribution plan. According to Ippolito and Thompson's (1999; Industrial Relations, 39: 228‐245) excise tax avoidance hypothesis, a number of firms have switched to cash‐balance plans because conversion allows the firm to avoid excise taxes on its excess pension assets. In contrast to existing studies, our evidence supports the excise tax avoidance hypothesis. Cash‐balance plan conversions also have been criticized for imposing pension losses on older employees. The implicit contract theory of pensions predicts that poorly performing firms would be the ones that would impose losses on employees. However, our evidence indicates that firms converting to cash‐balance plans typically are not poor performers.     

The dynamics of CEO equity vs. inside debt and firm performance

This paper provides new evidence on the comparative dynamic effects of CEO inside debt and equity compensation on firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q. In contrast to the extant literature, we find significant empirical evidence supporting the classic Jensen and Meckling (1976) premise that managers should receive debt vs. equity compensation in proportion to the capital structure of the firm. We also provide new evidence showing that the effects of the CEO compensation structure on firm performance are dependent on the CEO’s time horizon, as measured by the expected period of employment to retirement. We show that the incremental benefits of equity compensation to performance increase with the CEO’s projected time to retirement. A similar, but insignificant relationship is observed for CEO inside debt compensation. Cash compensation is more beneficial to the firm when concentrated near the end of the CEO’s tenure.     

Ageing and the tax implied in public pension schemes: simulations for selected OECD countries

A key figure suited to measuring intergenerational imbalances in unfunded public pension schemes is given by the ‘implicit tax rate’ imposed on each generation's lifetime income. The implicit tax arises from the fact that, quite generally, pension benefits fall short of actuarial returns to contributions paid to these systems while actively working. Under current pension policies, implicit tax rates will increase sharply for younger generations in most industrialised countries. In this paper, this is illustrated for the cases of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Nevertheless, there are remarkable differences across countries regarding both the level of implicit taxes and their development over successive age cohorts, which can be attributed to differences in ageing processes and in the institutional features of national pension systems. In addition, we can demonstrate how effective different approaches to pension reform are in smoothing the intergenerational profile of implicit tax rates.     

The Tax Consequences of Long‐Run Pension Policy*

A firm's pension fund is legally separate from the firm. But because pension benefits are normally independent of fund performance, pension assets impact the firm very much as if they were firm assets. Because they are worth more when times are good and less when times are bad, common stocks in the pension fund add to the sponsoring firm's leverage. They cause contributions to a pension fund to be high just when the firm can least afford to pay them. Conversely, bonds in the pension fund will make it easier for the firm to avoid default on its own bonds when times are bad all over: The more bonds a pension fund buys, the more the firm can borrow. The tax treatment accorded the pension fund differs notably from that accorded the firm. Some have argued that a firm can capitalize on the difference by accelerating the funding of its pension plan. The benefits of full funding are wasted, however, unless the added contributions to the fund are invested in bonds; higher pension contributions now mean lower contributions later, hence higher taxes later. The benefits come from earning, after taxes, the pretax interest rate on the bonds in the pension fund. If the firm wants to take advantage of the differing tax treatment of bonds without altering the level of its current pension contributions, it can (1) sell stocks in the pension fund and then buy bonds with the proceeds while (2) issuing debt in the firm and buying back its own shares with the proceeds. An investment in the firm's own stock creates no more tax liability than an investment in stocks through the pension fund.     

What's good for you is good for me: The effect of CEO inside debt on the cost of equity

We find an overall negative relation between CEO inside debt holdings and the cost of equity capital. Such a negative relation holds in an instrumental-variable analysis, a test using changes in variables due to CEO turnover events, a test using seasoned equity offering (SEO) underpricing as an alternate cost of equity measure, and a difference-in-differences test based on the implementation of Internal Revenue Code Section 409A Final Regulations. Additionally, the negative relation between inside debt and the cost of equity capital is nonlinear, suggesting the existence of optimal inside debt compensation that can minimize cost of capital. The negative relation is less pronounced in firms with pre-funded executive pension plans and in firms that provide executives with the pension lump-sum option. We also provide evidence that inside debt lowers the cost of equity more for excessively levered firms. Collectively, these findings suggest that shareholders value the beneficial role of CEO debt-like compensation in constraining excessive managerial risk taking.     

Corporate social responsibility and inside debt: The long game

We examine the effect of CEO inside debt on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We document a positive relation between CEO inside debt and CSR. This positive relation is attenuated not only when firms face high risk, but also when firms have high short-term institutional ownership. Our evidence supports the view that CEOs with large inside debt holdings are more concerned about firm sustainability and, are therefore more likely to prefer CSR for long-term firm benefits, i.e., the long game. We also find that CSR and CEO inside debt jointly exert a significantly positive impact on long-run stock performance, particularly in the presence of a low level of short-term institutional holdings. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of aligning institutional investor preferences with CEO incentives in order to maximize shareholder benefits from CSR investment.     

Leverage and Taxes: Evidence from the Real Estate Industry

Finance theory has long viewed corporate income taxes as a potentially important determinant of corporate financing decisions and capital structures. But finance academics have been unable to provide convincing empirical evidence of a material effect of taxes on corporate leverage, in part because of difficulties in constructing an effective proxy for marginal corporate tax rates, and hence for the tax benefits of debt, for large samples of individual companies. The authors address this by analyzing leverage decisions in an industry whose publicly traded entities are organized either as taxable corporations, or as real estate investment trusts (REITs) that effectively avoid entity level taxation. This enables them to measure the relative tax benefits of debt with greater precision while controlling for important nontax characteristics that affect debt usage. The tax hypothesis predicts that for real estate firms with similar asset portfolios, taxable firms should have more debt than their nontaxable counterparts. Both the nontaxable and the taxable real estate firms in our sample routinely have more than twice the leverage of industrial firms, which suggests that factors other than taxes are contributing to their use of debt. But among real estate firms, tax status appears to play a much weaker role. Taxable firms have significantly more leverage only after 2000, when restrictions on REITs were removed through new regulations that made their operations much more like those of taxable real estate firms. Our findings also depend on real estate characteristics—most notably, only residential real estate firms demonstrated differences that are consistent with the tax hypothesis. Taken together, the authors’ findings suggest that although taxes do seem to matter, their role is clearly secondary relative to factors such as the nature of the firm’s assets. A generous interpretation of our evidence puts the effect of taxes between one‐third and one‐half of that implied by prior research.     

Does debt concentration depend on the risk-taking incentives in CEO compensation?

Using a sample of US non-financial firms we show that an increase in risk-taking incentives in CEO pay is associated with a greater debt concentration by debt type. This result holds in various empirical settings that account for endogeneity and is in line with the view that a more concentrated debt structure in fewer debt types reduces coordination problems among creditors and the related financial distress costs. Along these lines, we find our results are stronger in riskier firms, in firms with more volatile cash-flows or less stakeholder-orientation and when CEO pay incentives are embedded in vested options that are expected to favor business choices with more immediate negative effects on debtholders' wealth. Overall, our findings are consistent with theoretical models in which the debt structure of a firm acts as a commitment device.     

Corporate capital structure and pension-funding strategy

This article provides an integrated analysis of pension funding and corporate financing strategies in the presence of default risk. The article shows that when the marginal personal income tax rate is constant, the financing decision with respect to pension funding is influenced entirely by tax considerations. When the marginal personal income tax is progressive, the optimal financing of pension funding depends on the cyclical nature of the firm (as characterized by the sign of beta), the riskiness of pension assets, and ERISA regulations concerning the pension-benefit guaranty rate, the marginal pension insurance premium and the firm's legal responsibility for its unfunded pension obligations. It is shown that a necessary condition for partial pension funding is that the marginal insurance premium imposed by PBGC must be less than actuarially fair, and a necessary condition for pension funding to be financed by both debt and equity is that beta must be positive.     

Sharing Risk with the Government: How Taxes Affect Corporate Risk Taking

Using 113 staggered changes in corporate income tax rates across U.S. states, we provide evidence on how taxes affect corporate risk‐taking decisions. Higher taxes reduce expected profits more for risky projects than for safe ones, as the government shares in a firm's upside but not in its downside. Consistent with this prediction, we find that risk taking is sensitive to taxes, albeit asymmetrically: the average firm reduces risk in response to a tax increase (primarily by changing its operating cycle and reducing R&D risk) but does not respond to a tax cut. We trace the asymmetry back to constraints on risk taking imposed by creditors. Finally, tax loss‐offset rules moderate firms’ sensitivity to taxes by allowing firms to partly share downside risk with the government.     

CEO inside debt and internal capital market efficiency

Agency theory argues that managerial equity-based incentives are more effective when firm solvency is likely while debt-based incentives are more effective when firms face a greater likelihood of bankruptcy. We examine the relation between chief executive officers' (CEOs') inside debt holdings and the internal capital market allocation of multi-segment firms. We find that CEO inside debt holdings are associated with conservative capital allocation to firm segments, with the result driven by financially distressed firms. Further analysis indicates that although CEO inside debt, on average, is negatively related to firm value, the relation is positive for financially distressed firms. Our evidence indicates that inside debt holdings align the interests of managers and external creditors, inducing managers to pursue conservative capital allocation strategies that appear to be optimal for firms facing insolvency.     

CEO inside debt holdings and risk-shifting: Evidence from bank payout policies

Bank payouts divert cash to shareholders, while leaving behind riskier and less liquid assets to repay debt holders in the future. Bank payouts, therefore, constitute a type of risk-shifting that benefits equity holders at the expense of debt holders. In this paper, we provide insights on how CEO incentives stemming from inside debt (primarily defined benefit pensions and deferred compensation) impact bank payout policy in a manner that protects debt holder interests. We show that CEOs with higher inside debt relative to inside equity are associated with more conservative bank payout policies. Specifically, CEOs paid with more inside debt are more likely to cut payouts and to cut payouts by a larger amount. Reductions in payouts occur through a decrease in both dividends and repurchases. Our results also hold over a subsample of TARP banks where we expect the link between risk-shifting and payouts to be of particular relevance because it involves wealth transfers from the taxpayer to equity holders. We conclude that inside debt can help in addressing risk-shifting concerns by aligning the interests of CEOs with those of creditors, regulators, and in the case of TARP banks, the taxpayer.     

财政压力与地方政府融资平台的兴起

本文利用2004-2006年取消农业税的自然实验,使用1994—2009年的县级面板数据首次从实证上检验了财政压力导致地方政府融资平台成立这一假说。利用双重差分模型研究发现,取消农业税改革导致的财政冲击越大,县级地方政府在改革后设立融资平台的概率越高。这一发现在不同模型设定下保持稳健,并通过了基于改革前样本和利用其他税种收入变动构造的安慰剂检验。我们还排除了上述发现由扩权强县和财政省直管县等其他财政制度改革驱动的可能性。进一步的分析表明,面临更激烈的区域间竞争、初始财政禀赋较低的县更倾向于设立融资平台。本文丰富了关于财政压力对中国地方政府行为影响的研究,有助于更好地理解中国财政体制与金融制度之间复杂的关联性。